4 KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY USING FEEDBACK DURING TRAINING
Getting the most out of feedback when training technicians BY GARRETT COOK
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ne thing I’ve learned over time is, no matter how well you think you are doing, people around you may have a different perspective. Those people can include your family, your friends, your boss, your co-workers and even your customers. Yet, many times, when others want to share their perspective or feedback, we’re less than eager to accept it. After all, we all know ourselves and our jobs better than anyone else. As general manager of Cook Heating & Air in Crawfordsville, IN, I manage a small team of HVAC technicians, customer service reps and office staff. That same fear of feedback is shared by most of them. Yes, I said, “fear of feedback.” For most people, including owners and managers, feedback in the workplace has earned a negative connotation. Many of us misunderstand the purpose and the benefit feedback can
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As owners and managers, we need to make sure our employees understand that feedback is a gift that, used appropriately, can help improve their job performance. have for our employees’ success and our company’s success. We mistakenly assume feedback and criticism are synonymous. As owners and managers, we need to make sure our employees understand that feedback is a gift that, used appropriately, can help improve their job performance.
1. Understand the rules for providing good feedback
When training technicians on Cook Heating & Air’s customer service process, I make sure to also train them to understand, expect and appreciate feedback from trainers, peers and themselves.
• Say what could be improved
There are four keys to effectively use feedback to maximize technician training.
HVACR BUSINESS MARCH 2022
This is simple, but important. Everyone attending or hosting your training, including you as an owner or manager, must understand, and abide by, critical feedback rules: • Say what went well • Focus on being helpful and specific • False courtesy is no more helpful than ‘all criticism, all the time’ Once everyone is playing by the same rules when providing feedback, the fear of feedback employees may have decreases.
Try this exercise: the next time your technicians role-play a customer interaction during your training (and, hopefully, you are doing this weekly), have the technician you are providing feedback to offer his/her own feedback first. Having an employee verbalize feedback himself/herself helps reduce the fear of feedback when that employee hears it from others.
2. Clearly communicate the training expectations up front and provide feedback based on each of those expectations Think about coaching kids at baseball. The kids spend years doing the same drills. The more practice they have with a coach helping them, the more a particular instruction embeds itself in their brains for game time. Repetition helps drill it in until it’s second nature. Tracking consistent drills over time gives a coach a “form” for
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